I Sewed For Us. Małgorzata Mirgo-Tas at Brücke Museum.

July 19, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Brücke-Museum (the art-sanctuary of Die Brücke group’s practices, designed by Werner Düttmann in Berlin’s most greenery Dahlem district) invites for the second time a contemporary artist to enter into dialogue with its historical collection. Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, born in 1978, works in sculpture, painting and film, and especially the medium of collage. Mirga-Tas is Bergitka-Romni and grew up in a Roma settlement in Czarna Góra, Poland, where she still lives and works today. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow and besides her artistic work, she also works as an educator and activist.

Her tactile works depict everyday scenes from contemporary Roma communities, often integrating personal textiles and objects of the sitters. They show autonomous individuals beyond stereotypical representations. Based on the Brücke-Museum’s collection, these culturally and historically still predominant racist forms of representation of Roma are contrasted and thematized. The curator Joanna Warsaw writes of the artist’s work: “She creates an image of Roma as proto-Europeans, a multilingual, transcultural, and nonviolent group that reshapes conventions and decolonizes imaginary worlds.” Mirga-Tas represented Poland at last year’s Venice Biennale and was represented at Documenta Fifteen. She is currently a fellow of the DAAD’s Berlin Artists’ Program. This is her first solo exhibition in Germany, and you just can’t miss it if you’re in town! It’s on until the 3rd of September.

Here are a couple of Die Brücke group’s works from the museum’s permanent collection that were displayed alongside Mirga-Tas’ collages…

…and flowers from my favorite shop near Kollwitzplatz!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Commanding. Khaite Resort 2024

July 15, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Khaite resort 2024 fashion collection. Black sheer dress worn over lingerie. Art collage. Anna Ewers model.

Resort is the moment for Catherine Holstein to explore the more laid-back aspect of Khaite, the New York-based brand that keeps on stealing women’s hearts across the world. Super-chunky cashmere hand-knits and impressive sweater dresses clash with fluid sheer evening dresses and billowy ruffles. A stretch jersey henley bodysuit worn with high-waisted leather pants just might be the star of the season; it’s sexy in the offhand way of that virally famous Khaite cashmere bra that Katie Holmes wore a couple of seasons ago. You’ll also find the jeans that are a foundational part of the business – the silhouette of the moment is ’90s-ish, full-legged and relaxed – and an array of leather jackets that are unmistakably cool. A group of silk twill pieces in a souvenir print with depictions of New York City landmarks was a surprise, a charming one. Holstein likes an exaggerated shoulder and a defined waist, or a cropped one, and she experimented with military-style buttons on some styles. The coat silhouettes are oversized and commanding.

And here’s a couple of my favourite Khaite pieces you can catch now:

Khaite crystal-embellished suede tote

Khaite f rayed mid-rise straight-leg jeans

Khaite satin pumps

Artist At Home. S.S. Daley SS24

July 11, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The theme of artist at home has sprung dozens of stories where a visionary creates a vividly alive environment that becomes not only their studio, but a “total artwork” (Germans have a term for it: Gesamtkunstwerk). History of art – especially the British one – has plenty of examples of such romances between creatives and their surroundings. Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill. Sir John Soane’s home-turned-museum. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s Charleston, which became a bucolic residency spot for the Bloomsbury Group. For his spring-summer 2024 collection, Steven Stokey-Daley centres around the duality of ceremony and practice, following the life and home of an artist. Harry Styles’ favourite designer began his research by studying the lives of British painters Lucien Freud and David Hockney in their working environments, taking a look back at British public school dress while examining the shifts in sexual identity in the early 1900s. All that sounds distinctly S.S. Daley. The new season offering is a neat continuation of Steven’s style vocabulary: clean-cut suiting is paired with pleated shorts, blooming hydrangea embroideries decorate striped workwear sets, oversized wool knits are canvases for charming dachshund puppies (Hockney’s favorite breed, as well as mine!) and ducks. Some of the shirts come in still life fruit bowl print, which reminisces the ever-evolving European artistic tradition. Multi-pocketed, waterproof coats are nonchalantly splashed with paint (you just always splatter your favorite clothes while painting!), echoing the collection’s idea of merging the domestic intimacy with the sacred act of creating and expressing your own, untamed, highly-personal thing.

And here’s a bunch of my favourite S.S. Daley items you can shop right now:

S.S.Daley Navy ‘Bunny Boy’ Long Sleeve T-Shirt

S.S.Daley Off-White Tabard Vest

S.S.Daley Off-White Striped Shirt

S.S.Daley Red Tabard Vest

S.S.Daley Beige Large Tote

Clarity. Fendi AW23 Couture

July 8, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Kim Jones placed the creative synergy between himself and Delfina Delletrez at the heart of his Fendi haute couture show, and it worked: the collection felt assured and strong, comparing to his last attempts at the brand. “I started with looking at Delfina’s Fendi high jewelry, which she’s done for the first time,” he said. His palette flowed “in almost an organic way, with colors and embroideries based around the hues of natural stones, rubies and sapphires,” he added. “It’s the idea of the silhouette being ‘nothing’, but everything at the same time.” This collection didn’t reinvent the wheel, but it had couture clarity that can subtly compare with Pierpaolo Piccioli’s couture work at Valentino. The aesthetic Jones established is based around draped, wrapped, shapes – 1990s minimalist aesthetics merged with echoes of the statuary of ancient Rome, where Fendi is based. This season’s iteration became his canvas for the launch of Delletrez’s 30-piece collection of Fendi precious jewels. The models walked around a marble floored quadrangle, a scenographic impression of Fendi’s headquarters in Rome. Most were clutching a version of a Fendi bag – small rectangular leather jewelry boxes. Delfina’s distinctive diamond earrings, brooches, and necklaces shone from the runway. “Everything is very fluid,” she explained, showing how she created draped, asymmetrical shapes, studded with pink spinels and yellow diamonds, ingeniously incorporating tiny geometric plays on the Fendi logo.

Open To Imagination. Viktor & Rolf AW23 Couture

July 7, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The first part of Viktor & Rolf‘s autumn-winter 2023 couture collection nearly made me stop browsing the looks: the parade of cheesy swimsuits was ridiculous. But then the ridiculous became couture, big camp way. Instead of transforming their 30th anniversary collection into a line-up of humongous, ballooning dresses in the predictable shape of improbable Viktor & Rolf-ish birthday cakes, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren went the opposite route: undress. Catchphrases like NO or I WISH YOU WELL were extended from décolletages in 3D cubic type (a nod to their ground-breaking autumn-winter 2008 show), an apparent replacement for sleeves. Yet the show stopping icing on the birthday cake were headless mannequins donning female black tailored tuxedos, hanging onto the models’ backs, or twisting in multiple formations around their bodies as if they were desperately calling for attention and didn’t want to let go. The meaning of all this? “It’s open to imagination,” answered the designers in unison. Obviously, the V&R repertoire doesn’t include the banality of logical, reasonable explanations.